“Dur­ing sleep, the brain pro­duces a series of elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves. The major­i­ty of these waves are gen­er­at­ed deep in the brain from por­tions called thal­a­mus and cor­tex. Research sug­gests the cen­tral pur­pose of these waves is to drown out poten­tial­ly dis­rup­tive exter­nal stim­uli and pro­mote deep­er sleep states.

Sci­en­tists can use elec­trodes and diag­nos­tic tools to record these waves, and when they do, the activ­i­ty resem­bles the squig­gly lines of a lie detec­tor test or seis­mo­graph. Researchers refer to these lines as spin­dles.

“We found that those who had the low­est spin­dle activ­i­ty tend­ed to devel­op more dis­tur­bances in response to stress, when com­par­ing sleep qual­i­ty at the begin­ning of the semes­ter and the end of the school semester…We are not all equal­ly armed when fac­ing stress, in terms of how we can man­age our sleep. Some peo­ple are more vul­ner­a­ble than oth­ers.”

About SharpBrains

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, CNN, Reuters and more, SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science.